It was one year ago today I did my first @dailyshoot assignment. I give my tip of the blog hat to D’Arcy Norman for turning me on to this.
The theme one year ago was “water”, and was assignment #12
cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog
From the start I enjoyed the play part of the assignment- one could go literal (and I often do) and take a photo of a glass of water or a puddle or a lake…, but here I tweak on the notion of Arizona being a dry place (the broken box) and also this being the place where the water supply comes in my house.
One year later, today, the theme was
@dailyshoot 2010/11/24: Illustrate the process or thought of traveling today, possibly by documenting your own travels. #ds374
As I am not traveling today, I took the suggestion for “thinking of traveling” but photographing the corner of an envelope with the info for an upcoming vacation to Hawaii
cc licensed flickr photo shared by cogdogblog
So if you are in the dark, dailyshoot is a means to practice expanding your photographic skills (learn more at http://www.dailyshoot.com/). Each day they send out by twitter (actually it goes out twice to be more fair to people in other parts of the world) an assignment, a task for you to capture that day. Sometimes it is technique (depth of field, rule of thirds), sometimes subject matter, sometimes color.
Your task is to post your picture to one of several photosharing sites, and send a twitter message with a link to your photo to @dailyshoot and include the daily assignment hash tag. This allows the web site to aggregate photos by the assignment.
I already do (and have done all year) my own daily picture activity (2019/365 photos) for the third year in row. That one is really a matter of picking one photo a day that is meaningful or just your “best” shot. That can be a challenge for inspiration, especially, when, say, you live on 1/3 of an acre and struggle sometimes to find something new and unique in your yard. But maybe you tend to keep photographing things you know.
That’s why I love the dailyshoot concept- it forces you to try new things, and that is the kind of stretch that leads to improving your craft. I keep a home screen bokmark on my iPhone to http://twitter.com/dailyshoot, and try to check it first thing in the morning. If I have time, I try to get some shots early in the day so I have “something in the can”, but at a minimum, I keep the assignment bouncing around the back fo my brain.
There have been some tough ones to do, and I will admit that with 334 photos in my @dailyshoot bag, I have of course missed a few. That is another beautiful thing- it is really no big deal if you miss some. No one is checking, it is not a requirement. It’s on you to take on the challenge, and if you are say stuck in airports for 39 hours, well just skip ahead.
For me, the daily ritual of challenge, try, edit, maybe fake it with a clever caption, has been almost the one thing (well there’s another) that has kept my balance and energy going this year. I certainly feel like I am a better photographer, but more importantly, am a better noticer of the world.
I just love the concept, and look forward to another year of doing my @dailyshooting.
Here is my year of Dailyshoot–
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